As promised, I am back with another DIY holiday gift idea: a homemade Chocolate Mint Sugar Scrub that smooths and nourishes the skin.

I’m a total sucker for natural sugar and salt scrubs, and I’ve been playing around with all different versions of these since I discovered how easy they are to make at home. For this one you need just a few ingredients. You probably already have the sugar and cocoa powder at home; you can purchase the almond oil, the peppermint essential oil, and the optional Vitamin E oil in the cosmetics section of most health food stores.

You’ll feel all eco friendly and thrifty when you make this, but whoever you give it to will feel completely pampered. By the way, if you decide to keep it for yourself, that’s completely acceptable…because you deserve some pampering, too.

I like to pack my scrubs into glass jars, but you could also purchase plastic or tin containers for gift-giving purposes. A customized label is a nice touch- for the one you see here, I re-purposed an adorable card I received last year :)

If you don’t want to make the chocolate peppermint flavor, how about a lemon sugar scrub? Just leave out the cocoa powder and substitute lemon essential oil for the peppermint. You could make a mocha scrub by adding a tablespoon or so of organic instant coffee and forgoing the peppermint oil; you could add some ground cinnamon, too. This Brown Sugar Coconut Oil Food Scrub would also make a nice gift, or make a salt scrub instead.

This scrub is 100% natural and it’s really…truly…good enough to eat. The recipe below makes enough for a small jar (plus some left over for you). Feel free to make a much larger batch if you’ve got a bunch of people on your list.

Directions:

2. Add 1/4 cup oil and mix with the sugar/cocoa. Add more oil one tablespoon at a time until your scrub has the desired consistency. Add essential oil and option Vitamin E oil.

3. Spoon scrub into a sterilized glass jar with a tight fitting lid. Add decorative label or card including info about how to use the scrub (over wet skin in the shower) and how long it will last (about 4 weeks), if desired.